“One thing is sure,” Swen declared at last. “We will not make him happy if he comes about our place again! We do not wish our moose killed, nor the good people who visit our island disturbed.”
It did not seem probable that the man would return to this spot. “But where will we hear of him next?” Jeanne’s brow wrinkled. She thought of her two good pals up there somewhere on the ridge, then of their deserted home, the wreck.
“Does he belong to that black schooner with the diver on board?” she asked herself. She did not think so. “But what of that schooner?”
She decided in the end to abandon the task of solving mysteries and to give herself over, for the time, to the wild care-free life of Bihari and his band. For all that, as the Ship of Joy, riding the long sweeping waves that follow every storm, went plowing its way out of Rock Harbor and into the open lake, this little French girl sat upon the deck, staring at the sky. Her eyes were seeing things in the clouds.
“A barrel of gold!” she whispered. Then, in a hoarse exclamation, “How absurd! And yet, one must dream.”
* * * * * * * *
In the meantime Greta, impelled by memory of a strange vision seen in the cavern of fire, had started out in search of her companion. She found little to guide her on her way. Florence had gone away to the right of their camp. This much she knew; nothing more.
She had not proceeded far before she discovered that the narrow plateau was a bewildering labyrinth of trees, bushes, and rocks. More than this, its surface was as irregular as the face of the deep in time of storm. Here it rose steep as a stairway, there sloped away to end in a stretch flat as a floor.
“Never find her in such a place,” she grumbled.
“Florence!” she shouted. “Florence!”